1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a hair clipper, and more particularly to improvements on a hair clipper of a home use type having a cutter head and a base cover with a hair entrapping edge which is movable toward and away from a cutting edge of the cutter head.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Home hair shearing has been generally done by the use of a scissors. With the scissors, it is rather difficult for an unskilled person to perform hair shearing since it requires to manipulate the scissors in one hand and at the same time to hold hairs between the fingers of the other hand. Particularly, when manipulating the scissors, the blade edges of the scissors will engage the hairs at an inclined angle and be likely to push the hairs out of position along the blade edges as the blades are closed, failing to provide a straight cut. Thus, the straight cut with the use of the scissors requires a considerable skill and is found not to be practical in home. On the other hand, powered hair clippers have been utilized for many years in homes which are easy to manipulate and effect a straight cut. The prior hair clipper, as typically shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,546, is provided with a cutting head having a toothed stationary blade and a toothed movable blade. The movable blade is driven to reciprocate in hair shearing engagement between the toothed edges of the stationary and movable blades. Although the prior hair clipper may have a comb projecting past the cutting edge of the cutter head, it is manipulated to move in advance of the cutting edge which are held in contact or in close relation with the skin. Therefore, the prior art hair clipper is still required to be carefully manipulated in such a manner not to injure the skin by the cutting edge. This is particularly important when shearing the hairs of a baby or child. To eliminate the above problems and insufficiencies, a novel and unique hair clipper has been proposed in our copending application Ser. No. 446,124 filed on Dec. 5, 1989 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,034 in which an elongated base cover is hinged to a like elongated housing formed at its front end with a cutting head having toothed stationary and movable blades. However, the proposed hair clipper is not capable of selecting between hair shearing modes of different shearing capabilities and therefore fails to adequately meet convenience requirements of changing the hair shearing modes depending upon differing portions of the head. In this respect, the prior clippers are found to be still unsatisfactory for safe and convenient hair styling.